The disclosure relates to fiber optic assemblies used for making repeated optical connections and disconnections. Specifically, the disclosure is directed to fiber optic assemblies having optical fibers that are recessed from an end face of a ferrule for allowing large numbers of connections and disconnections (i.e., matings) while providing suitable optical performance over its lifetime.
Benefits of optical fiber include extremely wide bandwidth and low noise operation. Because of these advantages, optical fiber is increasingly is used for a variety of applications such as transmission of broadband voice, video, and data transmission. Conventional fiber optic assemblies typically use a ferrule in the connector for holding and aligning the optical fibers during mating with another complementary connector. While it is advantageous for the craft to make optical connections that can be disconnected, reconfigured and/or replaced, the assemblies are not used in a fashion where they have relatively large numbers of mating cycles (i.e., disconnect and connect cycles). Instead, conventional optical connectors are typically designed to have low optical insertion loss.
In order to achieve low optical insertion loss conventional optical connections use and strive for physical contact between the optical fibers. In other words, the ends of the optical fibers actually physically contact, thereby providing a low-loss optical pathway by minizing/reducing gaps, reflections, and the like. As such, the optical fibers of conventional optical connectors' desire that the optical fiber is at, or past, the front end face of the ferrule for achieving physical contact and minimizing optical losses. Likewise, the conventional multi-fiber designs use physical contact since optical connection is much more difficult and complicated with multiple fibers while providing low-loss performance. In other words, multi-fiber optical connectors use physical contact over an array of fibers.
Of course, there are conventional fiber optic connector designs that do not use physical contact such as lens-based fiber optic connectors. Lens-based fiber optic connector designs generally use lens near the end of the optical fiber for beam expansion, thereby providing a larger area for detecting the optical signal. Like physical contact connectors there are drawbacks to the lens-based fiber optic connectors when experiencing large numbers of mating cycles. For instance, the lens-based fiber optic connectors have performance issues with contaminants such as dirt and debris. The assemblies disclosed herein solve the need in the art for a reliable, durable and rugged fiber optic connector with stable performance over a large number of mating cycles.